Between Life and Something Else
by Anya Urameshi
Summary: When Gokudera opened his eyes, he was no longer sitting in the middle of a forest staring into the wide and still so innocent eyes of the fourteen year old boy he had failed to save but at a clear brilliant blue sky. various pairings alluded to.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: My theory on where the gang's future selves might have ended up. Will most likely be proven wrong in later chapters.

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When Gokudera opened his eyes, he was no longer sitting in the middle of a forest staring into the wide and still so innocent eyes of the fourteen year old boy he had failed to save but at a clear brilliant blue sky.

Somehow, he felt like the universe was mocking him.

"Oh, good, you're awake," a woman's voice noted as the sky was blocked by a figure leaning over him. Chrome offered him a hand, but Gokudera just shook his head and pushed himself up into a seated position. He knew she wouldn't be offended, and she wasn't, seating herself back into a kneeling position beside him.

"Where are we?" Gokudera asked, then winced when he realized that his question had come out harsher than he meant. Chrome smiled waverly and he knew that she knew he wasn't blaming her.

"The afterplane," she explained. "It's....like where your subconcious goes when you dream."

"So this isn't Namimori?"

"No," Chrome cocked her head to the side with a quizical expression. "Unless you want it to be?"

Gokudera shook his head. "No. I'm glad its not. But I thought my younger self might've gotten hit by Lambo's bazooka, so I was expecting to open my eyes and find fucking Takeshi's idiot of a younger self asking me if I was my own damn older brother or some shit like that."

"But instead...you're here," Chrome interpreted with a small nod. "And...no Takeshi."

"Yeah," Gokudera muttered. "Still trying to decide if that's a good thing or not...."

Chrome tactfully pretended not to hear him and instead stood to wander over to a nearby tree. Gokudera watched her, because he didn't know what else to do and she was the only other person there.

"I've been here for almost a day now," she stated quietly. "I haven't been able to get out like I usually can." The wind ruffled her long purple locks and the skirt of her white dress as she closed her good eye and took a deep breath. "I thought I might have died."

Gokudera froze, eyes wide as something clenched hard in his chest. "We-we're not....are we?"

The woman turned to face him with an unreadable expression. "I don't know. You tell me."

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A day passed. And then another. Gokudera paced around the soft green grass nervously and wished he had a cigarette, or five. Not out of any actual craving for the nicotene -he'd kicked that habit years ago at the request of the Tenth- but more so he'd have something to actually DO. He knew Chrome was feeling the same helpless boredom, sitting by a pond making endless chains out of wildflowers and throwing them into the water to watch them float across the other side, but she was better about not showing it. That woman was infintely more patient than Gokudera, and it didn't kill him to admit it like it would have when he was younger.

It didn't help that they had nothing to talk about. He and the female Mist Guardian hadn't been enemies in life, but they hadn't really been friends either. The few times either of them had tried to initiate a conversation, it had either gone back to Mukuro, whom Gokudera tolerated at best, Takeshi, whom Chrome didn't know much about, and one time Hibari -but Chrome had gone a brilliant shade of red and shut down like someone had flipped her off-switch and refused to speak for a long time after that.

They both adamantly avoided the subject of Tsuna, which was sad because their late boss was about the only thing they really had in common. That and an odd love for skulls.

Just as Gokudera was about to start chewing grass out of sheer boredom, something finally happened.

A bright light flashed around a space almost ten feet away from where Gokudera sat and there stood Yamamoto, resting his sword on his shoulder and looking like he had just found out that the world was ending.

Three more flashes and Lambo, Ipin, and Haru appeared by Chrome, causing her to almost fall into the pond out of surprise before Lambo caught her arm and yanked her backwards.

Gokudera was so preoccupied by Yamamoto, who was turning around to give him first a bewildered, then almost relieved look, that he didn't notice the next addition to their little party until Haru yelled, "Kyoko-chan!" and ran over to help her friend to her feet.

"Where-" Yamamoto started, but Gokudera didn't hear the rest of his sentence over the sound of Haru's frantic yelling and Ipin's fist meeting a tree out of frustration and the sound of his own heart beating itself to death against his ribcage as he took three shaky steps toward Yamamoto and stopped suddenly, wondering if he was welcome.

Yamamoto crossed the rest of the distance to pull him into a tight hug and for a moment everything was okay.

Except that it really wasn't.

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Gokudera wasn't sure who was more stunned by the sudden appearance of Basil, them or the man himself. As it stood, Basil seemed to fit in about like normal with their motley crew, spending most of his time talking to Haru down by the water.

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"I'd forgotten how adorable you were as a kid," Yamamoto stated one day out of the blue.

Gokudera turned to give him an bland look. "Adorable? Seriously?"

"Yep. Just like a cat. Still are."

"Adorable or like a cat?"

Yamamoto grinned and leaned over to pat him on the head, causing Gokudera to growl lowly.

"Both."

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Gokudera wondered if this is what insanity felt like.

From his seat on the bank, he watched Ipin and Lambo spar on the other side of the pond. The idiot cow was holding back, Gokudera knew it and he could tell from Ipin's frustrated expression that she knew it too.

In the waters, Yamamoto waded around trying to see if he could catch fish. Ever since Chrome had said her piece about how this place was whatever you wanted it to be, the Rain guardian had decided that the pond had fish, and voila, fish had appeared.

Gokudera wondered what would happen if he wished for snow and quickly decided against it when he felt the temperature begin to drop.

"Hey!" his musings were broken by the sound of splashing and Gokudera looked up just in time to see his idiot lift a struggling fish into the air with a whoop. "Look! I got one!"

"That's great," Gokudera replied, rolling his eyes even as he felt a small smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "Now put it back and get out of the water before you catch a cold or something."

"I don't think that's possible here," Yamamoto replied, but he let the fish go and made his way back to dry land.

"It is if I accidentally will a blizzard into existance or something."

"Haha, that would be fun! We could make snowmen and have snowball fights!"

Gokudera smiled waveringly and tried not to think about the last time he had played in the snow.

And then it began to rain.

"Hiiyyiii!" Haru sqeauled as she and Kyoko ran under a tree, laughing merrily. Gokuder wondered why he couldn't be happy like that.

"Did you do that?" Gokudera asked Yamamoto, who shook his head. They both turned to Basil, who looked just as perplexed as them.

Out of the corner of his eye, Gokudera saw Chrome freeze as a swirl of mist surrounded her briefly before vanishing all together. He watched as she hit the ground with a cry and covered her mouth as her shoulder's shook with supressed sobs. Lambo and Ipin were at her side in an instant, followed quickly by Kyoko and Haru.

"Mukuro-sama...." she muttered, clutching her hands to her chest as tears mixed with the rain steadily running down her cheeks. "Mukuro-sama!"

Gokudera didn't need to ask what happened. He watched as Ipin pulled Chrome into a hug and wondered why life had to suck so much.

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A few weeks later, Hibari appeared.

There was no fanfare. No flashing light that anyone had seen. One minute they were all sitting around wondering what the hell they were supposed to be doing, if anything, the next Hibari was seating himself next to Chrome and pulling her into a one-armed hug.

All the others reacted with various degrees of shock, except Gokudera who just sighed and flopped onto his back to stare up at the sky and Basil who leaned around Chrome to ask what the situation back home was.

"Nobody's dead that wasn't before," Hibari replied succintly. Chrome whipped around to stare at him with a hopeful expression and he nodded. Her one eye closed in relief and she leaned into his embrace with a sigh.

If it had been anyone but Hibari, Gokudera would have wondered if he was lying, but the Cloud Guardian had never been anything less than brutally honest, even to himself.

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A/N: This might be continued if I get any more info on what the hecks going on. Or if I find out that I need to add anyone else (notice how Basil's just kinda thrown in their? Poor guy...).


	2. Chapter 2

Basil had never really considered himself "one of the gang". Sure, he got along with them all of course. And he counted every one of them amongst his friends (even Mukuro on a good day), and was reasonably sure that they did the same.

"-and I just know that Tsuna-san will save us and-"

Basil bit his lip as Haru's words cut into his soul. He couldn't tell her. He didn't want to tell her. He had to tell her.

"I don't think..." he began, and stopped, taking a deep breath. "I don't think Tsuna's going to..."

"Of course he is," a gruff voice interupted. Basil turned to see Gokudera giving him a bland look. "Be it now or ten years ago, the Tenth is going to pull through. Don't worry."

Somehow, Basil knew those words were just as much for his benefit as the woman beside him's.

"You twirl the ribbon like this!" Haru instructed, flicking her wrist so that the ribbon which she had conjured moved in an expert corkscrew. "And then you can do this." She then proceeded to do a backflip, still twirling the ribbon around, over Lambo's head before flicking the end around the boy's wrist and using the leverage to yank him back on his butt. "See?"

"Yes, thank you, Miss Haru," Ipin replied, bowing slightly. "You are a good teacher."

"That was awesome, Miss Haru!" Lambo exclaimed, pushing himself back into a standing position.

"Well," Haru replied with a grin. "When I said I wanted to help you guys fight, I meant it!"

"Me too," Kyoko agreed, smiling softly. "Even if its not much. I don't want to be a burden."

"Oh, Kyoko-chan!" Haru exclaimed, running over to hug her friend. "You're not a burden! Your cooking skills are a thing of legend!"

"You think so?" Kyoko asked, cheering slightly.

"Of course!" A loud voice called from behind them. "Your cooking is great to the EXTREME, sis!"

"Brother!" Kyoko cheered, turning and leaping at her brother, who caught her in a bear hug. "You're ok!"

"Of course I am!" Ryohei exclaimed, smiling down at the redhead. "It takes more than a few thugs to bring me down!"

"Oh great," Hibari muttered, from his perch high in one of the nearby trees. "The loud ones here."

"I heard that, Hibari! Come down and fight me like a man TO THE EXTREME!"

Hibari was the one who explained everything. That Tsuna had planned this all out knowing he was going to "die". That he had told only Hibari and Irie and not trusted anyone else. That they were all stuck here while their younger selves mucked about trying to save them. That they were all helpless to do anything.

Gokudera had taken it a lot better than even he had thought he would. He just gave the sky a bland look before walking over to the pond and attempting to drown himself. Thankfully, Yamamoto had intervened by distracting him with some fireworks that he had hurriedly conjured and the two were now sitting down on the shore trying not to think about the Cloud Guardian's words.

It wasn't so much that Tsuna hadn't trusted them, though that did sting in a way that neither of them wished to acknowledge, and more of the fact that Tsuna was alive. That he had deliberatley left them to believe he was dead.

Kyoko, Haru, and the kids didn't understand the politics of the situation, but they were happy to hear that Tsuna was really alive (even though they hadn't actually known he was dead in the first place).

Basil breathed a sigh of relief and pulled Haru into a hug, heart lifting as the woman tilted her head back to give him a wide smile.

Chrome started crying and moved toward Hibari who met her halfway, pulling her into his arms and running a hand through her hair in a caring manner that threw everyone there to witness it for a loop.

Everyone except Ryohei, who hid a smile as he remembered the panicked look that had passed through the Cloud Guardian's eyes when he had found out that a thirteen-year-old girl was dying in the med bay.

In an effort to alleviate boredom and anxiety, they had all gone exploring in an effort to see if their was anything to this dimension than a grassy plain and a pond.

Staring up at the ruins of what appeared to have been a castle, Kyoko caught a glimpse of orange fire and wondered if there was such a thing as fire in the dreamworld. Wandering in, she admired the stoneware and smiled to herself as she traced along the walls with her hand.

"I wonder what it would've look like before…." She mused, voice quiet in the echo of the empty halls.

"I could show you, Kyoko-chan," a familiar voice stated quietly, warm arms wrapping around and filling her with a sense of comfort and warmth.

Before her eyes, Kyoko watched the walls shift and fade until they became whole again, tapestries and pictures were hung as the ground gave way to carpet beneath them and she stared in awe at the magnifigance of it all.

"Would you like to explore it with me?" Tsuna asked, nuzzling his face into her hair before leaning back to give her a soft smile as she turned in his arms.

Her answering smile was like pure sunlight as she nodded.


End file.
